Windows File Recovery is available from the Microsoft Store. If you are using Windows 10, version 2004 or later, you can try the Windows File Recovery tool. If you don't find the desired file, go to the next method.
Word backup file names have a ".wbk" extension. If the search results don't contain the file, go to the next method. If the Documents list (or Files list in Windows 8.1) contains the document, double-click the document to open it in Word.Select Start, type the document name (in Windows 8.1, type the name in the Search box), and then press Enter.Try searching for the document in Windows: To find a lost document: Search for Word documents
If you can’t open the document, or the content in the document is damaged, see How to troubleshoot damaged documents in Word.
Find lost files after the upgrade to Windows 10.If you're looking for information about how to recover other recent Office files, see the following articles: Restarting Word to open AutoRecover files.DOCX files are smaller, better formatted and optimized for the latest Word releases, making it much less likely that Word will crash, especially for larger documents.You can try to recover an unsaved Word document by: If you’ve updated to a newer version of Word, you may need to convert your Word documents to a newer document format like DOCX.
Saving a file to OneDrive (or using Word Online) will help to make sure that your Word files are safe as you make changes to it, making it much easier to recover if your PC fails. Knowing how to recover a Word document can help you save hours of your time, but the best fixes are the ones you put in place before you start working. Planning And Creating Better Documents In Microsoft Word If a hard drive fails, you can quickly load up Word files from your OneDrive cloud storage instead, saving you time. It may help you recover Word documents if the local file is lost or damaged, however, especially if your PC fails and you’re forced to reinstall Windows. Using OneDrive doesn’t provide a guarantee that future Word documents won’t or can’t become corrupted.